The management of pain (e.g. postoperative pain associated with surgery or joint replacement surgery) is often the most challenging and troublesome aspects of medical care. Inadequate pain control can be a source of significant anxiety and concern on the part of patients and their families and adversely affect recovery, rehabilitation, and need for homecare.
Current protocols for pain management incorporate various combinations of parenteral narcotics, regional anesthesia and nerve blocks. During the first 24-48 hours after surgery, narcotics are often required along with typical side effects such as nausea, itching, vomiting, drowsiness, urinary retention and ileus, respiratory depression, and even death. Regional anesthesia and nerve blocks may be associated with temporary or permanent neurologic dysfunction.
Analgesics and anesthetics are used to dull the pain receptors by controlling nerve output to the user's brain. The use of these traditional pain and sensory moderators allows doctors and medical staff to suppress a patient's reactions during surgeries and other invasive procedures to carry out the procedure correctly. The necessary dosage for these chemical compounds varies depending on physical characteristics of the patient, such as metabolism, weight, and body type. These chemical compounds, when used in a proper surgical setting, leave the patient without the ability to control the parts of the body that are numbed for some time after the surgery. This length of time which the patient cannot move various parts of their body requires the patients to remain in the hospital for the day or overnight. Some procedures may allow the patient to move much sooner than the anesthetics or would normally allow.
What is needed in the art are compositions and methods of providing better pain control and allow the patient mobility (e.g. after surgical procedures), reduced need for narcotics, and that allow the patient to return home the same day with full motor function.